Friday, October 21, 2016

Welcome back! Today I'm going to touch on two important things we discover in the second episode of The X-Files' first season, "Deep Throat." Spoilers included.

In "Deep Throat," we are introduced to an important character for season one. We never know his real name, though there is a theory that his name is Ronald due to the musings of The Cigarette Smoking Man in an episode in season four. That’s a bit of a weird, sketchy episode filled with “what might have beens” and we are never actually certain of what actually happened vs. what did happen. Anyway, this mysterious character is referred to as Deep Throat for the rest of the series.

Who is Deep Throat? We never learn much about him, actually. He does work for the FBI and often tries to guide Mulder towards taking or leaving certain x-files cases. He’s not terribly trustworthy, the snippets of his own life story that he reveals often contradict themselves, and he even outright lies to Mulder upon occasions, though sometimes it seems like he does this to protect Mulder.

He once revealed that, while fighting in Vietnam, he killed an alien, but the seemingly “innocent” expression on the alien’s face has haunted him since then. This gives us the impression that Deep Throat might be giving Mulder information because he feels guilty for what he did in the past and is hoping to make amends with himself.

Later on, we also learn that Deep Throat was part of a government group called The Syndicate and worked with The Cigarette Smoking Man and William Mulder - Fox Mulder’s father - among others. We assume that this and his unknown but apparently very high position in the government is how he knew so much about aliens and various x-file cases, putting him in a position to secretly reveal whatever information he felt necessary to Mulder.

That is not a question easily answered. In fact, the show has nine seasons, and at the end some people still aren’t completely satisfied with the answer. So...what do we learn in "Deep Throat"?

The government definitely has alien technology that they seem to mostly be using for aircrafts at this point. A secret military base that’s testing this technology out has a small town nearby freaked out over the constant “UFO” sightings. That, paired with the mysterious disappearance of one of the pilots that we are lead to believe flew one of the alien aircrafts, is what draws Mulder to the town - despite Deep Throat’s warning to stay away from the case.

We aren’t sure if the government is working with the aliens or just stealing their tech as they come to earth. (Roswell, anyone?)

In "Deep Throat," Mulder sneaks onto the military base but is captured. He had earlier theorized that the government was wiping certain memories from people’s minds to make them forget that they’d seen anything they weren’t supposed to see, and this theory is unfortunately confirmed as Scully gets Mulder back but he doesn’t remember anything that happened. This is frustrating because we can remember and we know that he saw alien aircrafts.

The episode concludes with the mysterious Deep Throat visiting Mulder once more and scolds him for looking into the case. Mulder is unfazed and asks if the aliens are among us. We are left with the chilling answer: